Welcome to Fall 2020! Messages from the VP of Student Engagement, Provost, and President
September 12, 2020 | Academics, Events, President's Office, Student Engagement
Welcome to Fall 2020! Watch our messages to students and families:
Dr. Maggie Dickinson, Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
September 11, 2020 | Academics, Faculty, Faculty Feature, First Year Experience, Humanities and Social Sciences, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Research, Urban Studies
“I want for students to understand how their own curiosity can become a resource for self-education… that they can take control of their own education, follow their interests, and trust themselves to learn independently.”
“What drew me to Guttman is teaching,” Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies Dr. Maggie Dickinson proclaims with passion, “that community of faculty who are just so dedicated to understanding teaching as a practice and putting that at the center of their work.” The Online Course Development training she led with fellow Guttman faculty Dr. Kristina Baines, which became urgent as COVID-19 took hold in Spring 2020, embodied this value. “Dean Blake really supported us in making it a home-grown professional development. We drew on the resources at Guttman to put it together [so] it really built on the work that everybody was already doing.” Since coming to the College in 2016, Prof. Dickinson has observed the shift to recognizing “that we have faculty who are leaders in understanding some of these [pedagogical] questions and we can draw on them as experts.”
Guttman’s Exceptional First-Year Experience (FYE) Holds Annual Summer Institute for Integrative Learning
August 3, 2020 | Academics, Faculty, First Year Experience
The Guttman Community College First-Year Experience (FYE) hosted its annual Summer Institute for Integrative Learning, held virtually June 22-26, 2020. Organized by Professor of English and FYE Program Coordinator Dr. Daniel Collins and Dean of Academic and Faculty Affairs Dr. Nicola Blake and supported by Assistant Dean Lavita McMath, the Institute focused on the cornerstones of the FYE: inclusion, integration, and community. The Institute prepares faculty and staff to work in the FYE and promotes excellence in teaching and student support, with the ultimate goal of increasing student retention and success in higher education. As the Guttman community grapples with the persistent social inequalities that put our Black, Latinx, and immigrant students at risk, made starkly clear by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Promising Practices that the FYE espouses have become especially relevant.
Dr. Amy Beth’s Conference Session and Webinar on Environmental Design Research in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic
August 3, 2020 | Academics, Conference Presentation, Faculty, Research
Befitting the abrupt move of teaching, learning, and academic conferences to digital platforms as a result of the pandemic, Guttman Chief Librarian Dr. Amy Beth facilitated a session titled Environmental Design Research and CoVid: Brainstorming research approaches to understanding our new normal & EDRA-Socializing at EDRA51 – the Environmental Design Research Association Annual Conference – hosted virtually from Tucson, AZ, in April 2020.
Dr. Dara Pir Co-Author of Paper Published in Proceedings of the 45th Annual IEEE ICASSP 2020 Conference
August 3, 2020 | Academics, Faculty, Information Technology, Publication, Research
Assistant Professor of Information Technology Dr. Dara Pir has co-authored the paper, “Transfer Learning from Youtube Soundtracks to Tag Arctic Ecoacoustic Recordings,” which has been published in the Proceedings of the 45th Annual IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2020), held virtually from Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, May 4-8, 2020.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Accepts Guttman Biology Lecturer’s Project
August 3, 2020 | Academics, Faculty, Global Guttman, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Research, STEM
Guttman Lecturer of Biology Derek Tesser’s project was accepted by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a federally funded research and development center managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA. Prof. Tesser describes his innovation: “I proposed to utilize Ecostress, an experimental NASA sensor recently placed on the International Space Station, for an integrative method to mapping Earth’s ecosystems from space. The approach will merge the thermal data acquired by Ecostress with information from Earth science radar satellites in orbit to characterize components of the carbon, water, and energy cycle in priority ‘hotspot’ ecosystems around the world.”
Dr. Alia Tyner-Mullings Applies Sociological Method to Studying Disney Films
August 3, 2020 | Academics, Conference Presentation, Faculty, Humanities and Social Sciences, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Publication, Research
In February 2020, Guttman Associate Professor of Sociology Dr. Alia Tyner-Mullings presented “More Than the Renaissance: Revisiting the Periodization of Disney Animated Feature Films” at the Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA. The presentation posits that, “if examining changes in popular culture,” the way a cultural artifact “is understood” must be contextually “defined [and] situated in a longitudinal analysis.” When the particular work “intersects with multiple social institutions, careful examination of the elements and their place in time is especially relevant.” Dr. Tyner-Mullings argues that “one example of this is the movies created by the Walt Disney Company. …They are not only a product of a media conglomerate and serve an entertainment function, but they, like other forms of media, also contribute to the education and socialization of children.”
Dr. Doris Cintrón Takes Office as Interim President of Guttman Community College
August 1, 2020 | Academics, President's Office
August 1st, 2020 at Guttman Community College marks the first day in office for Interim President Doris Cintrón. The CUNY Board of Trustees approved Dr. Cintrón’s appointment at a meeting in May. She is assuming office from Founding President Scott E. Evenbeck, who announced his retirement last December.
Dr. Tashana Samuel and Dr. Sebastien Buttet Awarded Multiple Grants and Lead Various Presentations
July 30, 2020 | Academics, Conference Presentation, Faculty, Publication, Research, STEM
Dr. Tashana Samuel was awarded a PSC-CUNY Grant in the amount of $5994.50 in order to conduct Math Anxiety Reduction Research. She was also a part of the CUNY Research Scholars Program (CRSP) where she served as a mentor to 2020 CRSP Fellow and Guttman Graduate Clarissa Intriago for research assistance on a math anxiety research project entitled, “Reducing math anxiety in the classroom using a mindfulness and growth mindset approach (MAGMA).”
Dr. Nicole Kras Leads Nationwide Presentations on Self-Care, Animal-Assisted Therapy, Ecotherapies, and More
July 30, 2020 | Academics, Conference Presentation, Faculty, Human Services
Guttman Human Services Professor Dr. Nicole Kras presented a workshop and a poster at the National Organization for Human Services Conference in Anaheim, CA this past October. “During the workshop, Providing Urban Community College Human Services Students Opportunities for Engaging in Self-Care: Utilizing Art Experientials and Ecotherapy-based Activities, focus was on the importance of encouraging human services students to develop self-care strategies,” stated Dr. Kras.
